The Department of State has just issued the April 2017 Visa Bulletin. This is the seventh Visa Bulletin of Fiscal Year 2017. This blog post analyzes this month's Visa Bulletin.

April 2017 Visa Bulletin

Final Action Dates

Applications with these dates may be approved for their Green Card (Permanent Residency card).

Employ-
ment
based

All Charge-
ability
Areas Except
Those Listed

CHINA-
mainland
born

INDIA

MEXICO

PHILIPPINES

1st

C

C

C

C

C

2nd

C

15JAN13

22JUN08

C

C

3rd

15FEB17

15AUG14

24MAR05

15FEB17

15SEP12

MU Law Analysis

All Other: The EB-2 has been current for many years. The EB-3 progression continues, moving an additional two months. Consular processed EB-3 are effectively current.

China: The China EB-2 date again moved up one month. The China EB-3 again date progressed nearly six months, just as it did in the March 217 Visa Bulletin. The China EB-3 continues to have a more favorable date than EB-2, as a result of many Chinese EB-3 workers "upgrading" their applications to EB-2.

India: EB-2 India moved up about 3 weeks, while EB-3 India stayed essentially the same, unfortunately.

Mexico: Mirrors All Other in all aspects.

Philippines: EB-3 moved ahead by nearly six more months. The Philippine EB-3 number essentially cleaned out most of the 2010, 2011, and 2012 EB-3 visas in less than 6 months. This is what we have expected. (Our note from September 2016: "This is consistent with internal MU Law analysis which sees this category progressing into 2013 by the Summer of 2017.").

The State of Hawaii is the first state to file a lawsuit in Federal District Court against Donald Trump's revised order banning entry to the US by citizens of six overwhelming Muslim countries (at least some, if not all of which are more than 99 per cent Muslim), and which also provides for additional countries, almost certainly Muslim ones as well, to be added to the banned list later on.

According to the latest reports, at least four other states, including New York, are planning to join the lawsuit, which has been filed in the United States District Court for the District of Hawai'i and is entitled:

The complaint sets forth the full history of Trump's Muslim ban orders based on Trump's campaign statements and other statements by his top advisors and makes clear beyond any possible doubt that the motivation for the orders was to exclude Muslims from the United States based on their religion only.

It then goes on to show how the discrimination against Muslim immigrants on the basis of their religion adversely affects the rights of Muslim US citizens, including but not limited to the individual plaintiff (a Muslim Imam), his family and members of his congregation. Details of this portion of the complaint will be discussed below.

Finally, the complaint describes how the interests of the State of Hawaii itself, as a center of religious and ethnic diversity, and with an economy dependent in large part on tourism, are damaged by the ban.

For the following reasons, it is virtually certain that the federal courts, including but not limited to the district court in the above case, will strike down the new Muslim ban order, despite the fact that it cures some of the more obviously egregious aspects of the original ban, such as the exclusion of lawful permanent residents ot the US coming from the affected countries.

First, the purpose and intent of the new ban, no less than the first one, is obviously to discriminate against immigrants and visitors based on their religion. As will be shown below, the "national security" justification for the ban is so thin as to verge on being a fraud on the court. See:

Second, the basic Constitutional guarantees of free exercise of religion and prohibition against establishment of religion are affected by the ban in a way that retrains and intimidates Muslim US citizens from the free exercise of their religion.

Third, contrary to the arguments which the Trump administration unsuccessfully brought before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in connection with the now revoked original seven Muslim country the courts have the power, and the duty, to look behind the ostensible reasons for the presidential finding under INS Section 212(f) that entry to the US from the banned Muslim countries is against the interests of the United States.

It is true that this section gives the president wide power over entry into the United States by foreign citizens. But we are not (yet) at the point where Adolf Hitler could say, as he did:

To be continued.
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Roger Algase is a New York immigration lawyer and a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. For more than 35 years, Roger has been helping mainly skilled and professional immigrants from diverse parts of the world, and from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, obtain work visas and green cards.

Roger's practice is primarily concentrated in H-1B specialty occupation and O-1 extraordinary ability work visas, J-1 training visas, and in green cards through labor certification (PERM) and through opposite sex or same sex marriage. His email address is algaselex@gmail.com